Metamorphosis Franz Kafka

How are the polysemic nature of texts represented in Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka?

Franz Kafka’s novella from a Marxist point of view, depicting the injustice and cruelty that the proletariat (wage workers) vs bourgeoisie (capitalists) war results in, which helps present the flaws in the social class systems. In the story the protagonist, Gregor Samsa, wakes up as a giant, cockroach-like creature, which ends up changing his life, job and family relationships. An underlying theme throughout is the idea of alienated labour. Levels of alienation can be seen in the story through the alienation of Gregor Samsa, the worker, “a commercial traveller”. He is distant from his work and takes no interest in it though he does it regularly, like his mother remarks “the boy thinks about nothing but his work”. The job alienates him from himself – even with a different body, his mind does not get out of the thought patterns, for example of regular work, engrained in him. “He was a tool of the boss, without brains or back bone”, highlights how the upper class of people exploit the middle class and rely on them to their job for them. Gregor suffers alienation from the material world, which he is no longer able to participate in due to his appearance and lack of mobility. By the end of the novella even his sister, Grete, the most sympathetic member of the family, remarks that they should stop thinking of the creature as the person they knew. She says that “the fact that we’ve believed it so long is the root of our trouble” highlighting that at some point, Gregor stopped being a person and not only because of his appearance but also due to his non-conformist actions. The beating he receives from his father shows the extent of the cruelty he endures, though his father knows that “family duty required the suppression of disgust and the exercise of patience, nothing but patience”. The tragedy is that this alienation ends up killing Gregor, who “dies not as a vermin, but as a human...